Galaxy merging, the fundamental plane of elliptical galaxies and the MBH-σ0 relation

By C. Nipoti, Pasquale Londrillo, Luca Ciotti. 2003

135 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We explore the effects of dissipationless merging on the Fundamental Plane of elliptical galaxies by using a N-body code based on a new, high performance numerical scheme (Dehnen 2002). We investigate the two extreme cases of galaxy growth by equal mass merging and accretion of small stellar systems; in a subset of simulations we also consider the presence of dark matter halos around the merging galaxies. Curiously, we found that the Fundamental Plane is preserved by major merging, while in the accretion scenario its edge–on thickness is only marginally reproduced, with substantial thickening in the case of merging with low angular momentum. We also found that both the Faber-Jackson and Kormendy relations are not reproduced by the simulations, in accordance with the results of a preliminary analysis based on a simple application of the virial theorem. Finally, we discuss the implications of our results for the origin of the MBH-�0 and Magorrian relations. We found that dissipationless merging is unable to reproduce the MBH-�0 relation, if the black hole masses add linearly (while the Magorrian relation is nicely reproduced); on the contrary a black hole merging with substantial emission of gravitational waves reproduces the MBH-�0 relation but fails at reproducing the Magorrian relation. We argue that our results strongly point towards a major role of dissipation in the formation of early–type galaxies and in the growth of their central supermassive black holes, thus supporting the idea of a link between galaxy formation and QSO activity.

Subfields: Astronomy and Astrophysics, Instrumentation

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/241f271515cc8ed7d5641ca252acb330258bf37a

How researchers see this paper

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In Astronomy and Astrophysics

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. M. Cappellari
4. T. Naab
5. Thomas J. Cox
6. R. Somerville
7. P. V. van Dokkum
8. R. Dav'e

In Instrumentation

1. P. Hopkins
2. L. Hernquist
3. M. Cappellari
4. Thomas J. Cox
5. T. Naab
6. P. V. van Dokkum
7. C. Conroy
8. M. Franx

Citations in the corpus

• THE DENSITY PROFILES OF MASSIVE, RELAXED GALAXY CLUSTERS. I. THE TOTAL DENSITY OVER THREE DECADES IN RADIUS (2012, methodology): “The galaxy was realized with N ' 2× 105 particles following the same procedure as Nipoti et al. (2003, 2009), using a softening parameter ε = 0.03a.”
• Red mergers and the assembly of massive elliptical galaxies: the fundamental plane and its projections (2006, background): “The low angular momentum runs, however, deviate significantly from these canonical scalings (similar deviations for low angular momentum runs were also reported in Nipoti et al. 2003; BMQ; Robertson et al. 2006).”
• Submillimeter Galaxies at z ~ 2: Evidence for Major Mergers and Constraints on Lifetimes, IMF, and CO-H2 Conversion Factor (2008, background): “5; Nipoti et al. 2003) connects the locus of the z 2 remnants to the most massive cluster ellipticals at z 0 at a mass of M 1012 M .”
• Hubble Space Telescope and Spitzer Imaging of Red and Blue Galaxies at z ~ 2.5: A Correlation between Size and Star Formation Activity from Compact Quiescent Galaxies to Extended Star-forming Galaxies (2007, background): “Models suggest that such ‘‘dry mergers’’ could decrease the velocity dispersion and increase the size of the resulting remnant (Nipoti et al. 2003; Boylan-Kolchin et al. 2006).”
• The Evolution of the MBH-σ Relation (2005, background): “…2002; Adams et al. 2003), stellar capture by accretion disks (Miralda-Escudé & Kollmeier 2005), dissipationless merging (Ciotti & van Albada 2001; Nipoti et al. 2003), unregulated gas accretion (Archibald et al. 2002; Kazantzidis et al. 2005), and the self-regulated growth of black holes by…”
• How Mergers May Affect the Mass Scaling Relation between Gravitationally Bound Systems (2007, background): “Dating back years before AGN feedback physics became a popular idea, one such fundamental factor considered by many was galaxy merging (e.g. Kauffmann & Haehnelt 2000; Haehnelt & Kauffmann 2000; Ciotti & van Albada 2001; Nipoti et al. 2003; Islam et al. 2003, 2004; Volonteri et al. 2003).”
• THE SLOAN LENS ACS SURVEY. X. STELLAR, DYNAMICAL, AND TOTAL MASS CORRELATIONS OF MASSIVE EARLY-TYPE GALAXIES (2010, background): “However, dry mergers do not, in general, retain the tightness of the bivariate projections of the parameter planes (Nipoti et al. 2003; Boylan-Kolchin et al. 2006; Nipoti et al. 2009b).”
• Properties of Early-Type, Dry Galaxy Mergers and the Origin of Massive Elliptical Galaxies (2005, result): “Gas-free mergers of spheroids preserve the fundamental plane (Nipoti et al. 2003; Gonza´lez-Garcı´a & van Albada 2003; Boylan-Kolchin et al. 2005), and the properties of the remnants are in general similar to those of observed elliptical galaxies (Naab & Burkert 2000; Gonza´lez-Garcı´a & van Albada…”
• How do minor mergers promote inside-out growth of ellipticals, transforming the size, density profile and dark matter fraction? (2012, background): “…the light profiles of elliptical galaxies is an important parameter as it correlates with other observed properties of elliptical galaxies, such as the effective radius re, the total luminosity and the stellar mass (Caon et al. 1993; Nipoti et al. 2003; Naab & Trujillo 2006; Kormendy et al. 2009).”
• Feedback in simulations of disc-galaxy major mergers (2005, background): “…Cox et al. 2006), or if the merger remnants fall on the fundamental plane (Bekki & Shioya 1997; Bekki 1998; Naab & Burkert 2003; Dantas et al. 2003; Nipoti et al. 2003; Boylan-Kolchin et al. 2005, 2006; Robertson et al. 2006), a tight correlation between the velocity dispersion, effective…”
• Dry Mergers in GEMS: The Dynamical Evolution of Massive Early-Type Galaxies (2005, unknown): “In contrast, simulations and models have demonstrated that dry merging will lead to scatter in the stellar mass–size relation (equivalently, the Kormendy relation; Nipoti et al. 2003) and the color-magnitude relation (CMR; Bower et al. 1998).”
• The Fundamental Scaling Relations of Elliptical Galaxies (2005, background): “As noted previously (Barnes 1992; Hernquist et al. 1993; Cole et al. 2000; Nipoti et al. 2003; Shen et al. 2003; Boylan-Kolchin et al. 2005), the effective radius of the spheroidal merger remnants approximately doubles in an equalmass merger and will introduce scatter parallel to the Re axis.”
• NICMOS Imaging of DRGs in the HDF-S: A Relation between Star Formation and Size at z ~ 2.5 (2006, background): “Mergers that involve substantial gas dissipation may increase the mass density of the remnant (Robertson et al. 2006), while dissipationless, or ‘‘dry,’’ merging increases the size of the galaxies sufficiently to lower their densities (e.g., Nipoti et al. 2003; van Dokkum 2005).”
• The Kinematic Structure of Merger Remnants (2006, unknown): “…et al. (2006) and we note that other work has also shown that multiple merger remnants can remain on the fundamental plane (Capelato et al. 1995; Nipoti et al. 2003; González-Garćıa & van Albada 2003; Boylan-Kolchin et al. 2006; Robertson et al. 2006a) and may have R1/4 surface brightness…”
• Cosmic Evolution of Black Holes and Spheroids. II. Scaling Relations at z = 0.36 (2007, background): “…projections of a more fundamental manifold (e.g., Hopkins et al. 2007b), allows us to disentangle stellar mass growth, stellar population evolution, and black hole growth and helps to identify the processes at work (see also Ciotti & van Albada 2001; Nipoti et al. 2003; Boylan-Kolchin et al. 2006).”
• THE COSMOLOGICAL SIZE AND VELOCITY DISPERSION EVOLUTION OF MASSIVE EARLY-TYPE GALAXIES (2011, background): “This already indicates that the size growth cannot be the result of equal-mass dry mergers, since the ensuing size growth should be, at most, directly proportional to the mass increase (Nipoti et al. 2003, 2009; Naab et al. 2009).”